The California Primary And The Frustrating Absence Of Ranked Choice Voting

from the a-well-ranked-idea dept

Even if you don’t live in California you’ve probably heard about the California primary coming up on June 2 (although early voting has already begun). In particular, you’ve probably heard about it because everyone and their brother has thrown their hat into the ring for governor, and, because it’s a “top-two” primary. Sometimes called a “jungle primary” (although Ballotpedia considers that only a primary where there can emerge a final winner counts as a true “jungle primary”), it means that Democrats and Republicans and all the third parties have their candidates mixed up in the same scrum, where the two who emerge with the most votes after June 2 will face off in the formal election in November. Which means that come November there could conceivably be two Democrats on the ballot—or, as some have fretted, two Republicans. There is far less Republican support in California than Democrat, but because there are so many Democratic candidates in the mix the fear is that they will dilute their own majority by having their support spread out over too many, and thus the two leading Republicans could sneak through to both the top spots.

Recent polls suggest that, especially now that some of the Democrats have dropped out, this fear of two Republicans probably won’t come to pass, although how this will ultimately turn out, especially given the clunky ballot design it’s caused by having so many candidates, remains anyone’s guess. (Difficult ballot design raises the possibility that people may not manage to mark the ballot for their preferred candidates.) But it isn’t just the gubernatorial campaign that raises the concern of party dilution; multiple offices on the June ballot have multiple candidates from the same party. And for all such offices it means that if you want, say, to make sure a Democrat is on the ballot in November, you might need to vote strategically and pick the Democrat currently doing best in the polls, even if it’s not the one you might prefer. California is a big state, and name recognition can really matter for popularity, which tends to favor incumbents and other people who’ve already managed to be in the public eye for some reason (like perhaps because they are billionaires and able to spend a lot of money on campaign ads…). It disfavors new candidates, or those just locally-known, even when they may bring something to the table that the more well-known candidates do not, because this set-up means that even their most ardent supporters might not be able to comfortably vote for them.

A big part of this problem is the jungle-ish primary itself. California inflicted it on itself via a proposition for dubious reasons, ostensibly to encourage politics to transcend party lines but with proponents possibly greedily eying the possibility of having slates of candidates in November elections who were all of one major party, with the other locked out, all the while failing to realize what 2026 is teaching: that this scheme could produce the exact opposite result of what they were going for. It also creates a potential constitutional problem for federal offices, because it ends up functioning as an extra requirement for candidates for the November federal office election: that the candidates first survived the jungle primary. And the Constitution is clear that no other requirements for a federal office, other than the ones it lists (age, citizenship, etc), are possible.

But the problems of the jungle primary would be much less acute if the election used ranked choice voting because it would allow voters to take a chance on a more long-shot candidate because even if that candidate doesn’t ultimately get enough support, the vote still won’t be wasted—it will instead be put towards the voter’s next preference. And by enabling voters to give support to everyone they think deserves it, in order of how much they think so, it allows a consensus to be formed that is much more accurate than this weird one-and-done game voters currently are forced to play, where they can only afford to lend support to a single candidate, which may make them have to choose between the one they want and the one they believe can win, especially when pitted against someone from an opposition party, lest none of the party they prefer potentially end up on the November ballot.

Of course, even with ranked choice voting this sort of jungle primary, where everyone from all parties are mixed up together, is still dumb, at least as long as we still have party politics. If we think it important that party affiliation matter, it would make a lot more sense to have voters use the primary to pick the party’s best representative and then match those representatives against each other in November. But as long as the jungle primary is turning the election into something where we are apparently trying to determine the top two choices overall, ranked choice voting better serves that goal by allowing voters to work towards their top choice, one that truly represents their affirmative preference for who they think should be in office, rather than be forced to spend their vote navigating the strategic concerns of who will end up on the final November ballot.

And even if the jungle primary is done away with, ranked choice voting will still be worth having, even in partisan primaries. Even when the choice is only between, say, a clump of Democrats, we want there to be a way for lesser known candidates to get the political support they can get by lowering the political cost of voters trying to give it to them. Voters could more easily make their number one choice a lesser-known candidate, because if that choice can’t prevail, with the same ballot voters can still choose among the more well-known as a fallback position. Whereas now if they take the chance on the lesser-known, they will not be able to offer any support to any of the remaining choices, no matter how much they may prefer one over another. If they spend their vote on someone less popular, it is all but thrown away.

As now-Mayor Mamdani exemplifies, as someone who was a relative outsider and able to emerge a popular leader thanks to ranked choice voting, it’s important for the health of democratic politics to be able to have a system friendly to new ideas, which can ultimately turn out to be extremely popular if given a chance. Ranked choice voting means we can finally give them one.

Filed Under: california, elections, fairness, jungle primary, primary election, ranked choice voting